During February 2013, I took three of the four Wilton’s cake decorating courses. I really enjoyed all of the courses but you do a lot more work (read that as homework) than the first course I took in January. This course teaches you how to make various fondant and gum paste flowers along with how to cover a cake and cake board with fondant and decorate your cake with your own design. Here is my final cake. I was happy with the outcome but did have a bit of difficulty with covering the cake and the fondant cracking in one place. This was due to the fact that I had rolled my fondant too thin.
I cheated by including a briar rose in my design (you learn that in course 4)
Now to give you a little information about what else was involved in this course. Since I had purchased the big tool kit when I took the 1st course, I didn’t have to buy many things for this particular course. Also, the advantage of taking all three at once was sharing the same material (gum paste and fondant) for all of them. I did have to buy, specifically for this course, a large fondant rolling pin, a mat to roll the fondant on, a 12″ diameter 1/2″ high cake board, fondant to cover cake and cake board, a box for the cake.
Gum Paste Bow
In the first class you learn how to colour fondant and gumpaste using gel paste. We learnt how to make a bow and also make rose bases for rose, carnation and mums. It doesn’t sound like much but time does fly when you are making them. Second class involved learning how to make carnations, roses, calla lily and rose leaves. I was happy with the flowers I made in class.
The 3rd class included making daisies, mums and covering the cake board with fondant. Although my flowers were good but after I brought them home and they dried, my mums lost a few petals when I was trying to move it and wasn’t that careful. Gum paste flowers can be very fragile once they are dry.
In preparation for the final class I made 7 roses, 3 rose buds, 6 calla lilies and 2 briar roses. I wanted to dust them with petal dust but I didn’t have enough time to do that. Also had to bake 2 8″ cakes, make buttercream icing. The amount of stuff I had to carry to the class was insane! But I was not the only one. It took me about an hour and a half to put the cake together from filling to icing to covering it with fondant and decorating it. Here is another look at all the decorations I learnt during this course!
Culinary Adventures of The Twisted Chef T 
Good day! I could have sworn I’ve been to this website before but after browsing through a few of the articles I realized it’s new to me.
Anyways, I’m certainly pleased I stumbled upon it and I’ll be bookmarking
it and checking back often!
Your carnation is beautiful!!! I am so jealous……I really struggle with making them. How do you keep each layer from collapsing on the layer below it? What tool do you use to ruffle the edges?
Thank you 🙂 I loved making the flowers 🙂 I will see if I can do a short video of how I make the flower. 🙂
That would be so awesome if you did a video. I understand if you don’t have the time….any pointers you could offer would be greatly appreciated.
I’ll definitely try 🙂
i wonder if there is a coarse on the internet , i would love to learn
You can try Craftsy.com for their many online courses. I have not taken any yet but they seem to have some basic to advanced cake decorating courses. Good luck 🙂
Nice work! I have kind of leaned all these through you tube tutorials. But I wish i could learn from professional bakers as I might have missed a lot of points.
Thank you. I have seen your work and they are amazing. Specially loved the details on making of the car. I have yet to experiment with sculpting. I have watched a lot of videos on youtube to learn various techniques. The only benefit of taking these courses is that you get to benefit from the teacher’s experiences, you get to ask questions and she can correct you when you are not doing something the right way.
Great job! I did the Wilton courses too and have been doing cakes for family / friends events ever since.
I loved the courses. They reminded me how much I enjoyed baking and I learnt to make the fondant and gum paste flowers 🙂
This reminds me of the good old days when I used to bake wedding cakes and make sugar flowers. When my fourth baby arrived I could’t cope so I stopped baking for sale. These look wonderful!!!
Thank you Liz. I do love to bake and decorate. And just fell in love with gum paste flowers. Can`t get enough of it. actually itching to make cakes so that I can decorate them 🙂 I am thinking of starting my own cake business but don`t know much about getting started. If you don`t mind me asking, how did you get started and how did you find it as a business?
I first started by baking for my close friends and family for a fee. Then slowly I got other friends of my friends and family, and I baked for them for a fee as well. My business actually just grew by word of mouth, and also because I made quality products. I just did everything from home (had extra room in the house). Unfortunately demand was too high and I couldn’t balance family and business so I stopped. It does take time though for a a home based business to grow but if you focus on it and give it all you have it can be very profitable within five years. And another thing I lived in a large city so this helps as well, lots of people ordering birthday, anniversary, wedding and all other occasion cakes. Give it a go!!!
Beautiful work!
Thank you 🙂
During this course can we learn how to do Orchids? I’m interesed on doin some orchids. Is it possible to change the flowers.
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